Glass parts, e.g., glass covers and/or displays, are often used in handheld electronic devices. Providing a reasonable level of strength in the glass parts is crucial to reduce the likelihood of failure in the glass parts. As handheld electronic devices are often subject to being dropped or otherwise mishandled, reducing the likelihood of glass parts breaking after being dropped or mishandled is desirable. To this end, glass parts are often chemically treated to increase the strength of the glass parts. Chemically strengthening of the glass parts, however, typically significantly increases the surface roughness of the glass parts.
To reduce the surface roughness of glass parts after chemical strengthening, mechanical polishing processes are often used to smooth the surfaces of the glass parts. Mechanical polishing processes used to reduce surface roughness after chemical strengthening generally remove a significant amount of material from the surfaces of the glass parts. The removal of a significant amount of material from the surfaces of the glass parts to reduce roughness may have an adverse effect on the strength of the glass parts. A chemical strengthening process induces compressive stress on the surface of a glass part, and the compressive stress decreases towards the center of the glass part. As the amount of material removed after the chemical strengthening process increases, the compressive stress at the surface of the glass part decreases.
Therefore, what is needed is a method and an apparatus for reducing surface roughness on glass parts without significantly compromising the strength of the glass parts. That is, what is desired is a method and an apparatus for reducing surface roughness on glass parts without removing a significant amount of material from the glass parts.